


he showed me what was love

by lamphouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Autistic Castiel (Supernatural), Bittersweet, Bittersweet Beginning, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Relationships With Sex, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Introspective Castiel (Supernatural), It doesn't come up explicitly but it's me so, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Non-Penetrative Sex, Really the whole thing is just, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: "I'm gonna head out now, if you're all set here."Dean's voice is as gentle as his hands, not soft (no amount of sweetness can cover calluses, and there's always been something so forceful about Dean, an urgency and intent in his movements) so much as careful—full of care. Despite his words he doesn't make any move to leave, and when Cas realizes this, it makes him just brave enough to say, "You don't have to."
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 81





	he showed me what was love

**Author's Note:**

> really wish I could convey the dawning horror of the last 3 days as I realized I was going to finish this fic on dean's birthday. I held off posting for a day out of respect but uh... well, hbd king, hope it went well, here's some morose sex

Slouched atop a crinkly motel bedspread in Illinois, Cas listens to the neighbor flick through indecipherable television channels and thinks about the trajectory of his existence.

Whoever is next door must be going through something as well because the channel surfing noises haven't stopped for twenty minutes now. Cas himself is too tired to turn on his own TV, despite the fact that he's actually found himself missing cartoons the past few months, their simplicity and humor something he thinks of fondly as oddly indicative of that last chapter of his life as an angel on his own terms, outside of Heaven (as much as possible) and able to spend time in the world with those he loves. He listens to this neighbor's cyclical static and imagines he can still hear the snippets of dialogue through the wall clear as day, as he could then. Dean would probably still be able to tell him what shows they were; Cas remembers another motel in another state, Dean with his eyes shut and back to the screen rattling off titles and names with ease as Castiel flipped through the channels: "Alan Alda, _M*A*S*H_ , the one where they all wear red; too easy, _The Hangover_ ; _Law & Order_, uhh, guest star Claire Danes, remember I made you watch _Romeo + Juliet_?" like Cas could ever forget the feeling of Dean shifting in place every time a character said something too familiar, like Cas was paying attention at all to this silly game and not simply watching Dean while he could do so unobserved.

In this state, in this motel room, Cas faces a silent television set with an aching wrist, palm, and ego. He slouches against the headboard of the room's single bed and listens to Dean putter around, clad only in his own boxers, a borrowed plain t-shirt of Dean's and a velcroing wrist splint of Sam's left in the Impala with his backup laptop. Dean is cleaning up the remnants of their dinner (burgers, Cas has found, are hard to eat one-handed, though they are more enjoyable in Dean's presence, so it evens out) and his impromptu nursing stint, having already bullied Cas into taking the room for the night with mumbled, vague references to getting another.

The smell of antiseptic hangs over the room; though he's seen the brothers douse plenty of wounds in a variety of alcohols both in Dean's memories when Castiel rebuilt him from scratch and in the few times Cas hasn't been able or allowed to heal them, apparently Cas warrants the real thing. He feels like he should be offended—an imagined implication that he can't handle it, that he's being babied—but he isn't. If he had to put words to it, Cas would say he feels a peculiar mixture of some tender cared-for feeling, a little bit of holiness in a distinctly unholy way (the reverence with which Dean avoids his eyes and wraps white bandage around his palm), and, somehow, loneliness.

Something else hangs over it all, heavy and sweet and sad, but Cas doesn't know what to call it.

Regardless, it's a lot to deal with on top of the very physical sensation of exhaustion, and he sinks closer to sleep in the few seconds Dean steps away to the bathroom trash can. Of course, his time with Dean is now a precious commodity, so he makes an effort to keep his eyes open and mind alert, but Cas doesn't pick himself up from his slouch against the headboard even when Dean says his name. Actually, it would appear his eyes have slipped shut again without his permission, but he can feel where Dean is in the room by some primal sense of heat, precious in itself. Besides, this way he might not have to actually watch Dean leave this time.

Dean doesn't leave, though. No, following the sound and heat through the room, Dean heads first to the duffel on top of the TV, takes something out of it that rustles in his hands, goes back to the bathroom, and snaps his phone open to type something. Though Cas is still not quite comfortable with noise as he's trying to sleep, too used to straining his ears for angels in the physical plane (and, on lonelier nights, searching for angel radio), the tiny reminders of Dean's presence are soothing in a way he wouldn't expect.

Cas loses the plot in a haze of half-sleep and misses the logistical steps between Dean texting in the open doorway of the bathroom and Dean sitting on the empty side of the bed, lights off. He only wakes up fully when Dean barely touches Cas's shoulder with the tips of his fingers, pressing more firmly when Cas's eyes open. The streetlight outside glows fuzzily through the tips of his hair.

"Hey."

"Mm." He sits up an inch more. "Yes."

"I'm gonna head out now, if you're all set here."

Dean's voice is as gentle as his hands, not soft (no amount of sweetness can cover calluses, and there's always been something so forceful about Dean, an urgency and intent in his movements) so much as careful—full of care. Despite his words he doesn't make any move to leave, and when Cas realizes this, it makes him just brave enough to say, "You don't have to."

Were it daylight, were they not completely alone, were it the night after any day but the one they had, Dean would have pulled away then, once less than gentle shoulder pat and faux-casual assurance that that amorphous "it" is alright his only goodbyes. He would have reminded Cas of the water bottle on the nightstand and shown up too bright in the morning to drag Cas to a diner crowing about showing Cas some real food now that he can appreciate it before taking him to work and driving off into silence for another month and that would be that. Cas would return to mopping floors and carding teens and occasionally staring into space imagining Dean showing up, undoubtedly worse now that he knows what Dean looks like on the other side of the counter, holding Cas's vest in the hands Cas still dreams about but perfectly bearable. They could both go back to normal: routine, mundane, _human_ normal, worlds apart despite their geographic proximity.

But it is this night, and they are alone, and in the dark it's much easier to bear the half-sight of Dean nodding once and bringing his shoe up to untie, boots falling one-two muffled on the carpet flattened with age. He doesn't look at Cas before getting up to stow his outermost layers and check the latch on the door. The slick clatter of the curtains closing on the sliver of light at what will soon be _their_ feet slips over Cas's drifting mind soon enough to remind him to watch as Dean climbs into the bed, quiet and unceremonious and very beautiful.

Something had changed earlier when Cas, hand lifted between them for Dean to finish wrapping his palm in gauze, had finally asked an unspoken question he couldn't put into words. Dean had looked back at him, face as expressive as the rest of him is when he doesn't remember to subdue it, and blinked once slowly as one would at a stray cat. And Cas just... listed forward until his head landed on Dean's shoulder, spine bowed like a tree branch coated in ice. And Dean let him, one hand covering the nape of Cas's neck whenever it wasn't absolutely needed to wrap his wrist in bandage and splint both.

There was a wash of sadness over the moment when he looked at it from a distance. Five years ago he was the lone soldier of Heaven to make it deep enough into Hell to rescue this man, this righteous human being, and now he is slumped on a motel bedspread while the same man bandages his gardening scrape for him. Were it anyone else, it might be something beautiful (mutual humbling, noli me tangere) but Cas can't detach enough to see anything more than the long, dark, infinitely desolate avenue of the bad decisions that led him to fall this far.

(Not that Cas believes humans to be a necessarily lower form than angels—far from it, but the arc of Angel of the Lord, capable protector of those he loves, to lonely human who can barely fend for himself is hard for him to read as anything but a fall.)

His mistakes don't weigh on him now, though—or they do, but the weight is distant, somehow both heavy and intangible. Now, Dean shuffles under the covers to avoid pulling them off Cas, surreptitiously watching Cas while Cas watches full stop. There's both a hesitance and reverence in Dean's glances, the wide-eyed look of a man memorizing every detail he can, that settles cool and soft in Cas's chest. It stays high in his chest as he commits to memory the already flown glimpses of Dean's bare feet on the carpet, his elbows in the bright fluorescents leaking in from the parking lot. Human memories face more quickly than Cas had hoped, but still he tries.

Once Dean is settled, his watch on the nightstand and his phone nowhere in sight, he turns into his side and gives Castiel one last look. It's a request: for permission, blessing, forgiveness, Cas doesn't know what, but he tries to give whatever it is because he knows instinctively that without it, Dean will leave. He hates watching Dean leave only slightly more than he hates having to leave himself, and if he does so now, Cas knows it will truly break him.

Dean doesn't go. He doesn't even move, really. He says, "Goodnight, Cas," clicks the last light off, and returns to his position on his side, face to Cas, invisible. He's there, radiating silent heat mere inches from Cas, closest at their bent knees before the cool void at their feet.

Though Cas can't see it, he knows they're mirroring each other, and that thought more than any other is somehow what makes that unnamable sadness ache the most.

The thing is, he likes working at the Gas'n'Sip. It gave him a sense of external belonging, a structure and hierarchy that brought order and meaning to his daily life when he needed it most, perhaps not as significant as his previous "job" had, but important in its way. But being with Dean again, no matter how briefly, made him feel like he belonged in the truest sense: like no matter what he was doing, he was where he was supposed to be solely because he was there with this man. Driving with him through streets Cas has only ever walked before, following him through police tape without so much as a word, allowed on his own merit as he is somehow silently understood to _go with_ Dean, his partner in some amorphous way that made Cas's chest ache. To be lying in bed with him, matching in this unspoken and intimate way, wearing Dean's clothes and filling the other half of his bed when he knows this is not something Dean ever does, really, is almost unbearable: so close to what he's always wanted and yet just far enough to make it worse.

And so, as bone-deep tired as he is, Cas can't sleep now. The agony of the moment, of the magnetic pull in the inches between them, precludes peace of any kind, so he listens to Dean's gentle breathing and the TV through the wall and strains to make out even an outline of Dean in the dark. He suddenly remembers a song heard on the Impala's radio that Dean had declared an "all-time creeper anthem" but mouthed all the words too when he thought Cas couldn't see, a song about watching one's beloved through the night, despite the detriment to one's own rest. Once Cas could—indeed did—forgo sleep to listen to Dean breathe, moments which somehow did feel endless in their detail, each second of Dean's sedate existence so fascinating as to last forever.

He can only guess now when Dean is truly asleep, unable to sense the mercurial edge of his consciousness as he slips into dreaming, but when he thinks enough time has passed and Dean's breathing has grown even enough, he dares to reach across the divide, the back of his fingers close enough to Dean's arm that he can feel the air between them grow heavy with heat.

Longing. That's the word. What Castiel feels now is longing.

"Dean."

He says it just to say it, feel the sound in his mouth and know that the face for the name is right there for once, but then Cas senses in some proprioceptive way that Dean hears him: a minute shift of the mattress as Dean's shoulders grow taut, perhaps, or his eyelashes opening. It only occurs to him then that Dean might be awake—and that, since he is, Cas will have to find something to say, or at least bring himself to say the sad thing he was thinking of.

When Cas doesn't continue, Dean asks, voice lax with disuse, "Yeah?"

"I can't see you."

Something shifts: Dean smiles, Cas knows when the other man speaks again and his words come out with high corners. "Well, it's dark, so..."

Once, Cas's response would have been a glare. In their time apart, he almost forgot how annoying Dean could be, but he was quickly reminded when Dean first appeared like a mirage that morning and Cas realized he hated him a bit. The sting of being thrown out of one proverbial home only to be thrown out of another, one he really thought would be it for him, welled up again at the sight of him even as he was struck by the powerful nuance of real life Dean that his memories could never capture. He felt guilty and angry and resentful and _sad_ , all of it focused on the face he cherishes most of all in a way that made him feel even more dreadful on top of that. He doesn't doubt that Ephraim was telling the truth when he said he could hear Cas's pain for miles.

Cas doesn't hate him anymore. He honestly thinks he physically couldn't like this, face to face and invisible in the dark and so much closer for it. There is no part of him left to protest like this when Dean is lying in front of him with his back to the door so he can stare blindly in the direction of Castiel's face. Smiling quietly, five inches maybe between their noses, and—

God forgive him, for so many things, but he really does love Dean, and it's hard to have that grin turned on him and not want to lay his life at Dean's feet just to keep him looking like that. Even if Cas can't see it. Somehow, especially.

"Exactly." Cas knows without seeing that his own smile is different: sadder, though equally soft. "It used to be that I could see you as clearly in the dark as I could the middle of day—or, not so much see you as sense you other ways: see the shape of your face in its heat, the sounds it makes as your sleeping mind manages all the small actions that maintain your body. I could feel you dreaming and see in lower light, at least, your face in some detail, but now there's nothing. All you are is a voice in the dark."

The long pause that follows his words only makes Cas wish he had that specific power back even more. In the telling, it became something much more than a simple observation, half confession, half plea, and suddenly seeing Dean's reaction is incredibly pressing. He knows Dean's face is doing something, at its most expressive when he thinks no one else can see, but the only clues Cas has in the dark are the occasional blanket rustlings of Dean shifting in place.

That is, until Dean says, "Not just a voice."

Cas has barely a second to decipher the sense of a warm body moving through space before Dean's fingers alight on his own. That very air is sucked out of the room entirely as those fingers curl around the hand between them, strong along the back of Castiel's palm and light in the thumb resting along the edge of his bandage, half touching warm skin to warm skin.

"See?" Dean says, thumb then drawing pattern around but not over Cas's cut. "Hands too."

He twists his own wrist to gently weave under Cas's immobile one until they're palm to palm, lined up fingertip to fingertip. There's nothing suggestive about either words or actions—or rather, there is, but what they suggest is not what one would assume from the adjective. It's not sexual, or at least not only so; it's the unspoken thing that they've been dancing around for years, pulled taut between them in moments of vulnerable peril where there are fewer and fewer reasons to pretend they don't understand the extent of their bond. Though there is still a kind of last-night-on-Earth feeling to this one night away from the world, it is different enough that it's almost shocking, Dean saying something in a moment of quiet ease when before it took one of them being at death's door to spit anything of significance out.

This last thought spurs Cas on as he nudges his fingers between Dean's and leans in until the dark shadows start to resolve themselves into the face he had memorized long before he ever met it. If he remembers correctly, humans are remarkably adaptable and will slowly acclimate to darkness enough to see in some colorless detail. Humanity is learning to see things in the dark that are really there.

Cas is so busy trying not to read too much into this idea that he stumbles into an honesty that he didn't mean to ever bring up.

"I miss hearing your prayers," he admits slowly to the space between them. "I miss feeling you miss me."

It's too big an admission for both of them and he feels guilty that they're so intertwined that Cas cannot confess something of himself without exposing Dean too, though Cas hopes this reciprocity does something to lessen the shame Dean will feel.

It doesn't, of course (when has it ever?), but Dean responds remarkably anyway and flinches into the sentence instead of away, tucking their foreheads together in one swift movement. He's like that: remarkable. He always surprises Cas, good or bad.

Outside of the mingling of their incorporeal beings in Hell, a handful of hugs, and a night they've never spoken of, this is the closest Castiel has ever been to Dean. It's not just the physical aspect: whenever Cas heals him, his grace melds momentarily with Dean's soul, tiny glimpses of the total contact of their first meeting. Here it's more than that, although it should technically be less, physical without the metaphysical. Here is a raw nerve of emotion, both of them more open with each other than they've ever been in years of knowing each other, a kind of honesty Cas has never experienced. It makes him lean into Dean more, skull to skull and _closer_ like they can step inside each other's bodies—something that should be familiar to Cas but that takes on a whole new meaning here.

"I—" Dean's hand leaves Cas's to rest on his cheek as his voice fills the thick air between them. "Yeah, of course I do, man. Of course I do."

Though Cas can't quite close that hand yet, he manages to sneak his arm under Dean's neck and rest his wrapped palm on the crown of Dean's head, where the short lines of his hair radiate out like the sun. He feels Dean's quick inhale against his face, the trailing end of it ragged like he might cry even as his face (eyes admittedly closed now) is clear. They're too close for Cas's eyes to focus, but that doesn't stop him from committing to memory every detail he can, every freckle he knew from afar as a pinprick now clearly oblique, every fine eyelash and pore. His other hand still lies between them, both afraid to rupture the moment with extra touch and more than content to simply drink in the sight of Dean, so close.

"I'm sorry," Dean whispers with broken vowels.

"It's okay."

Dean's laugh is a tiny, bitter thing, wet and airless. "It's really not."

"No," Cas agrees, because it's true, "but I understand. Sometimes... we have to do small bad things in order to do greater good." Then, going out on a limb of suspicion, he adds, "Sometimes we have to protect some at a cost to others, even ourselves."

Dean's shoulders freeze in confirmation of the suspicions Cas has had since the Impala left him in the dust of that Greyhound station. There has been something odd about Dean's face whenever he's checked his messages from Sam on this trip, stepping away whenever he calls though Cas would be more than happy to speak to the other brother as well. He couldn't help overhearing earlier when Dean had still been on the phone when his shift ended that afternoon, picking out with mild self-hatred and mostly confusion how Dean didn't once mention Castiel's presence; couldn't help noticing the penitent kindness of Dean not grousing too much when Cas one-handedly lost a few fries across the Impala's front seat on their way back to the motel.

"I don't..."

Cas nods sadly and slowly. "I know."

He may not be an angel anymore but he's not an idiot. He can see the way Dean holds any and everything about Sam close to his chest even now as he's open to Cas in every other way. Something is happening with Sam, something which has to do with Cas's exile and, knowing Dean, probably involves some kind of self-sacrifice or otherwise heavy burden. Something hangs like a shadow over Dean's face, something Cas wishes he could take away as easily as he used to lift cuts and bruises from the surface of Dean's skin, as he lifted the trauma from Sam's mind, as he lifted Dean out of Hell. Instead, all he can do is lay his hands on Dean's cheeks and bring his forehead close enough to kiss: solemn but not stern, as sweet and expressive as he can make it.

Dean's air leaves him in one long rush, catching at the collar of Cas's borrowed shirt and the sheets held over the gap between their bodies by their bodies. He burrows closer, inhale shaky, forehead colliding not unpainfully with Cas's chin. The movement brings the top of his head an inch from Cas's lips and fills the suddenly warm air with a smell Cas now knows is the inoffensive pleasantness of shampoo no one would willingly choose: tiny bottles Cas can imagine lined up on the lip of the bathtub not five feet from their heads. Tomorrow, Cas will use what's left of those tiny bottles for the first real shower he's had in weeks, and the first part of that fact will make him the saddest.

"I wanted you to stay," Dean says lowly into the space beneath Cas's chin, those his hands on Cas's hips say all that needs saying. He exhales in what might be a laugh and adds, "I was kinda looking forward to it."

A month ago, hitchhiking through the errant fields of Iowa in an evasive spiral back towards the bunker, Castiel had dropped his mental guard for long enough to wonder if maybe something would change between them now that he was human too, if there was any point in hoping for something good to come of his fall, for it to have knocked down the last wall necessary between them. Cas has always known how Dean has felt about him, all of Dean's want and longing conducted straight into his ears and growing ever louder the more Castiel got familiar with the frequency. It was harder to recognize in himself, but the first time he heard Dean's voice after falling, payphone tinny, he recognized the feeling from the inside. So for that traitorous second, he wondered if this might happen—if, in close quarters like that, no question of loyalties or capabilities, both, for once, on the same page at the same time, they might be able to act on that, if not talk about it.

He isn't sure why he didn't see this coming. It always seems that Cas gets what he wants in the worst possible way and at the highest cost. Still he gets it.

"I was looking forward to it too," he tells the top of Dean's head. It now only takes the smallest of movements, hardly more than a simple thought, to bring them into contact.

Cas can tell as it's happening that this is the one, the push that breaks the levee. Barely a second passes before Dean shudders even closer, mouth grazing the side of Cas's neck in the process, right where his collar would usually fall. Cas can't help the hitching sigh that falls from his own mouth in reply, but it only spurs Dean on. He presses closer until his lips are closed around the tendon that strains as Cas grips his shoulder with his good hand.

Heat twitches through his body with every nanoscopic change in pressure. When Dean's teeth make a guest appearance, that body responds before Cas can, pushing his knee between Dean's to drag him closer as his free hand does the same under Dean's arm. Every touch short circuits Cas's whole body, leaving him unable to focus on more than the patch of heat under his jaw where Dean has landed. The first conscious move Cas makes is to say his name, curled in enough that his nose is touching Dean's ear, and that is the beginning of the end.

Here is a confession to no one: this is not the first time this has happened. Years ago, they did this same dance: far too solemn silence, things said too easily, and the two of them horizontally face to face. It was in the front seat of the Impala, rain spotting the windows and a bottle of holy oil in the trunk itching constantly at Cas's consciousness until his hands caught in Dean's hair and the world briefly flickered out of existence— and again when Cas shoved them both soaking wet into the backseat as soon as they left Raphael's sight. It was the closest to human that he had ever been and yet a distinctly inhuman experience; with every brush of Dean's fingers against his bare skin, Castiel felt his blood literally sing in his veins, the vibrations of atoms as it rushed and rushed like music in the unnatural register of angelic sensation.

Maybe all humans felt like that, though, and Castiel just did not recognize it. Maybe he will now.

So it was once, and it was twice, and it was a handful of brief, adrenaline-fueled moments in Purgatory, world outside of time, and then it was no more. There was something with the reaper who killed him (briefly, which makes Cas smile; more than anything he's done while human, it is an important rite of passage) but not what he led Dean to believe in a brief bid for jealousy, and regardless, there was no way it could ever be like this. Not like Dean. Nothing ever was.

Dean, who is now nestled underneath Cas's ear, cold nose and deep breaths. He pulls back slowly, stubble raking against stubble until they're cheek to cheek, then nose to nose. His eyes are closed as he says quietly, tone bordering on a question, "Cas..."

"Dean," Cas answers as he fits his hands to Dean's cheeks and leans in to finally kiss him properly.

It's more than a kiss. It's a confession: a breathless monologue, a five year story told in heartbreaking detail, a lament too terrible to voice. It feels safer to think like this, unable to accidentally speak the wrong words, and Cas lets the flood of emotions overwhelm him, lets himself put into words things he has avoided for years now, things like "I love you" and "I need you" and other such fragile admissions.

If Dean understands him, he doesn't say anything to discourage him, simply kisses back again and again. Still locked together, Dean's hand falls to Cas's thigh and traces the skin there, down to his knee and then back up against the grain of hair and under his boxers to cup his ass. The move pulls Cas's underwear taut over his dick and he strains into it, into the scant air between them as Dean leans over to reconnect their mouths. 

"Hm, Dean, wait—" Cas leans back enough to grab Dean's hand, the end of his sentence dangling when he forgets about it in lieu of savoring the feeling of Dean's hand in his own and his hot breath on Cas's cheek.

In the few seconds Cas's attention is scattered, though, the silence warps under the combined pressure of Dean's gaze and (more pertinently) low self esteem. Quickly, before Dean can misunderstand and pull away, Cas presses first his lips to Dean's cheek and then Dean's hand to the front of his boxers. This must be what Dean meant when he described the freezing hot rush of grace that accompanied every healing, ever cosmic touch. Like the painfully pleasant rush of feeling returning to cold toes with a blistering shower, it is past the point of simple binary spectrums like temperature and far into the territory of pure sensation: no valent, only feeling. Even with Dean, it hasn't been like this before, a bodily experience too quick to rationalize down to a specific touch or aspect, barely a consequence of the whole, merely something that has perhaps always existed deep in Cas's body and was waiting for this confluence of events to reveal itself.

When Cas yanks at the back of Dean's shirt, Dean finally stops his slow movements long enough to pull it off, revealing miles of smooth skin that Cas wants nothing more than to trace with his lips (for once, Cas is glad that becoming human has made him more aware of his body, if only because now that he has to use lip balm this should be much easier). The moment turns molasses and Cas realizes he can finally see well enough to make out Dean's eyes in the dark. Colorless in the dark, Cas mentally fills in their warm shade, bright as an apple in some lights and warm as mud in others. Right now they are only grey, but that doesn't stop them from being beautiful, and the longer Cas looks, the more he can make out other parts of Dean's face: his shining lips, the tiniest offset in the slope of his nose. Cas looks for the freckles he knows are there and does not feel disappointed when he can't find them, tracing them anyway with the tip of his thumb.

Cas is staring, he knows it, but he can't help it. Even in the half light, only a collection of prominent features, Dean is beautiful. Dean must surely know he's staring, better at adjusting to the dark as he is with years of experience both as a hunter and as simply human, but he doesn't say anything like he normally would. Cas hears now the ghostly echo of Dean telling him years ago to "stow the baby blues before someone gets hurt, man," when Cas was staring at him from a foot away as he always was then. The absurd, childish thought reaches him then that he hopes Dean still thinks about his eyes. It would only be fair; every time Cas falls asleep it's a fifty-fifty chance that he sees either endless fields of his slaughtered siblings or Dean's face and body and voice in perfect detail. There's no question which he prefers, but they both hurt in their own ways.

Perhaps that's only fair too, though; he remembers once Dean telling him pretty much every human feels guilty at their core, and Cas certainly hasn't ever felt shame as acutely as he has these past few weeks.

"Now you believe me?" Dean says quietly. Cas worries he may have accidentally said all that aloud before he continues, "Not just a voice."

"Oh." Cas resists the urge to clear his throat, a sound too loud for this small space. "Yes."

Dean must catch something in his voice, because he doesn't kiss Cas again, holding back to ask, "Cas?"

"I'm here."

"I know, just—" Dean's nose bumps into his cheekbone. "Are you happy?"

Cas doesn't know what to do with that. His silence hangs in the air.

"Cas..."

He swoops in, cutting off the last of Dean's breath until Cas can feel the sharp inhale of cold air between their noses. Their lips part momentarily, but only so Dean can gasp like a swimmer breaching the surface before diving back in, his tongue behind Cas's teeth and hands under Cas's borrowed shirt.

Those few words exchanged seem to have broken some kind of seal, as Cas finds himself no longer able to contain the responsive sounds that crowd his throat, leaving now as gasps and moans stifled by Dean's mouth. When the first few don't send Dean running for the hills, Cas tries to stop caring and resolves to make the most of the moment. If he has Dean in his arms, he will take what he can get, lest God damn him more than He surely already has.

This time when they part to together remove clothing, no one dawdles, the urgency of the meeting having returned. Barely a second passes between the collar clearing Cas's ears and Dean's lips finding his chest, lingering hot and leaving behind wet patches that the lazy fan overhead makes flare coldly. It's either that or Cas is overheating, which would make sense for the moment even as he still feels the emptiness of not having his grace run too hot for a human body. He wonders if Dean notices the difference. It doesn't really matter, but he wonders.

Once Cas's shirt (Dean's shirt on Cas's body, he can't stop thinking about it that way) is thrown somewhere off the edge of the bed, Dean is on him again, nipping at the now bruisable skin of his shoulder. Cas holds him there with his bandaged hand on the back of Dean's neck, the minute shifts of the muscle under his fingers both heady and grounding.

Mouth free now, the endless stream of sound Cas can't help emitting resolves itself into Dean's name: "Dean" as lips graze under his chin, "Dean" as a hand wraps around his lower back, "Dean, _Dean_ " as another returns to hover over the thin barrier of his underwear.

Dean's touch turns into an actual grip soon enough, strong and sure and still not enough. When Cas rocks up into it, Dean pulls back the same amount, keeping up his steady pace even as his own breathing becomes more desperate. It's already torturous; what stamina Cas may have had during their first encounters seems to have disappeared along with his grace, bringing him too close to the edge too fast. It takes all of his limited self control not to rut up into Dean's hand and not let up until he's finished, but other, equally base thoughts filter through the heated fog in his mind.

"Dean," he says again, this time like the start of a sentence rather than the entirety of it.

"What?" Dean asks Cas's neck, voice striving for playful but too low to pull it off. "I know this ain't nothing new to you, not even as a human."

If there's a bitter twinge to it, Cas must be imagining it, because when he pulls Dean's face free by the back of his neck he sees only the used shine of his lips before Dean dives back in, hungrier than before.

"It's different," he says when they manage to part long enough to form words. "Why wouldn't it be different? You—"

Dean kisses him again and Cas can't decide whether it's to stop him finishing his sentence or because Dean knew where it was going anyway and was jumping ahead to his own reply. At the moment it's hard to think about deeply. Much more pressing is the insistence with which Dean leans in with his whole body, lining them up from head to toe and almost rolling Cas onto his back.

Cas has studied every inch of that body, touched all of it in reassembly, but never felt it all so alive and so close. There is something _else_ about it, like Dean is more than the sum of soul and body, some product of the combination that Cas could not feel before. It's in the fine hair on his thighs brushing against Cas's own, the arrhythmic meeting of their chests as they breathe out of sync, and, yes, his dick brushing tantalizingly against Cas's through their respective last layers. It is the knowledge of everywhere they've been together and everything they've seen and still more, indescribable even with Cas's vast knowledge of the world.

It is Dean Winchester and it is something else. Cas thought he already knew that, but he guesses he didn't really understand.

Cas feels first the blankets shifting over them, then the gasp of cool air and the quick replacement of Dean's body heat as he drapes himself over Cas in their stead. He wastes no time and seals his mouth over Cas's nipple, which Cas is saddened to find is no longer as sensitive as it was when he could physically control each inch of his vessel.

The reverse happens when Dean's hand grazes his bare side, which flinches. Cas realizes distantly that he's now on his back, bedsheets rucked up at odd angles beneath him as he slides away from the pillows. It matters less than Dean's hands on him, but he does eventually notice.

As Dean presses his whole palm there, overlapping slightly with his still-sensitive lines of warding, he says into Cas's skin, "Missed this so much, Cas, fuck, you got no idea."

"Obviously I do." Cas presses down on Dean's shoulder as fingers again trace over his tattoo in anticipation of his migrating kisses.

Dean's mouth is sharp against Cas's chest as his own hand trails over Dean's back, over the bruises he knows are forming now, over the ribs Cas knows are similarly inscribed. He never asked what exactly the Enochian said, and though the Castiel of years past would have probably still lied some, the idea of admitting it feels far too intimate even now. It is more involved and intimate than the script on Cas's own side (than, also, the writing on Sam's ribs—equally effective, surely, but it's lucky they did not both get x-rayed) in a way that the Castiel of the time didn't entirely understand. Yet even then, Apocalypse looming and Father in the wind, Castiel hadn't been able to resist the territorial urge that caused him to leave his first mark on Dean's body, the claim that once scarred the very arm currently between their hips. Dean's ribs still bear the proof, the concise warding Cas now wears lost amidst the declaration that any angel that should find him regardless should know that harm to Dean Winchester is, as the man himself might say, a one way ticket to oblivion, and that so sayeth the angel of Thursday, whose name is loosely translated into human tongues as Castiel.

If Cas could still perform miracles of the literal variety, he would change some of the wording, would sign it as Cas, angel not of the Lord but of the Earth, of the Winchesters, of the one in particular as it has always been—angel not at all, but still more than capable and willing of fulfilling that promise, no matter what. He would write that this man is not only protected but loved, cared for more deeply than the reader could ever comprehend. He would carve for all to see but the man himself that it is an honor and privilege to love Dean Winchester and be trusted enough to protect a man who has never truly needed protecting, and so this serve only to stand by his side, watchful of not only threats but the man himself, shield of the sword that fights for itself.

Dean's tongue traces the black lettering and Cas jerks, into and away from the touch in equal measure. He suddenly needs Dean within reach, which he technically already is, but that doesn't stop Cas from grabbing underneath both of Dean's arms and hauling him back up the bed to twine their tongues together again.

The problem (and it is certainly a problem, or at least will be again very soon) is that Cas can't stop kissing Dean. He used to think of kissing as an arcane, arbitrary human ritual that was at best unsanitary and at worst actively revolting. He understood the purpose of it, of course, and eventually the sensation too, but not the urge—like many feelings, it was something he didn't have before meeting Dean. Now it is a concrete thing with many vivid facets: fingers wound in his hair, a tongue across the liquid smooth roof of his mouth, the clinging feeling of lips parting slowly from lips.

It's still not entirely pleasant. Dean's mouth is soft but kind of slobbery, and the sensation of their teeth bumping when one of them opens their mouth too wide is deeply unpleasant and makes Cas shiver in the wrong way. But he can't stop; kissing Dean makes him feel the way eating packets of dry instant oatmeal does, his breath catching as cinnamon sugar coats his throat, coughing out puffs of sweet dust. He has the feeling Dean wouldn't be too happy to hear that particular anecdote from Cas's new life, but Cas likes it: the artificial tang underneath the spices, the bland oats that catch in his teeth, leathery dried apples the same as they were millennia ago. He wishes he could fully convey why this simple, odd delight is so powerful to him, how it is human and divine, modern and ancient, saturated with sensation almost to the point of overstimulation, and entirely worth every second of what his human body tells him is dangerous, in its own small way.

Except, there's a phrase for that, isn't there? Something taking one's breath away? Another addition to the list of phrases Cas now understands in both their metaphorical and literal senses.

With Dean's face in front of his, touching his, it's easier to reach down, down the back of Dean's boxer briefs and around the strong curve of his ass. It doesn't matter that his other hand is useless, that he can't pin Dean in place the way he could with the strength of Heaven behind him, twisted to this purpose; Dean hums something like a word into his mouth, maybe Cas's name, and the thought goes to Cas's head as quickly as any power ever did.

It's quickly lost into soundlessness when Cas grinds up, holding Dean in place with a forearm across his lower back, careful of the bruises forming where he was thrown into the wall but still solid. He starts to tug at the elastic that weighs on his wrist, to alleviate the currently impossible conditions keeping him from fully feeling Dean, but at the slightest shift of fabric on skin, Dean pulls back enough to look down at Cas.

"Hang on," he pants over Cas's prone body. "You don't have to—"

"I want to." It doesn't matter how the sentence was going to end, he thinks as Dean tips forward to knock their foreheads together.

"Just— Let me take care of you." It's almost a question, underscored by how Dean's free hand comes up to desperately hold Cas's cheek, eyes closed and yet begging Cas to look at him. "Let me make it up to you. Please."

Cas has been so lost in his own thoughts tonight that he hasn't seen the preoccupations written plainly across Dean's face before now. He's spoken so little, far less than he had the last time they did this, which was mostly nervous rambling that gave way to uncontrollable sounds of pleasure. But for mornings when Castiel has not had to soothe a single nightmare, a quiet Dean is never a good thing, and yet he's spoken so little since they got into bed—since they left Nora's, even—that it should have sounded warning bells hours ago. This paired with the frantic determination of his brow now sinks Cas's heart, but some part of him recognizes this for what it is and cannot say no.

It's apology and atonement, mixed up in want as it is on both sides, and Cas understands those feelings very well, so he brings his hand up to lace their fingers together and lays back.

He has to let go soon enough when, after another long kiss, Dean uses both hands to gently pull off Cas's boxers, but he reaches back up as soon as he's done. Dean leaves his own underwear on as he slides back down the bed, sheets bunched behind him as he mouths at Cas's ribs and hips.

One of the few things Cas actually hates about being human is hearing his own bones and muscles shift beneath his skin, loud enough in silence to keep him up at night with the squeaking crush on bones in the hand under his cheek. A passing car's headlights tumbles through the bottom of the curtains. For a second all Cas can see is the tremble of the headboard above them as he listens to his own hand creak in Dean's, feels the trail of Dean's lips down his body grow ever warmer until it ends where Dean takes him into his mouth.

Dean is talented at many things: hand to hand combat, recreating meals from restaurants, strategy board games, detective work, pool, guessing what song will play next on the radio. Sex is one of those things, obviously, and he'll bring it up as easily as any of the other bullet points on his figurative résumé, but not so much this act. Cas knows he's aware, knows that knowing this makes being on the receiving end more than the usual amount of pleasurable. He's seen Dean's soul, been in his dreams (he'd always leave when he realized, but never quite fast enough); he knows the mix of pride and shame Dean feels at this but has never found the right words or opportunity to say that there's no reason for the latter and all the more for the former. Cas may be wholly oblivious to most human social cues, but he knows enough to not randomly bring that up randomly. Besides, he tries not to bring up things about Dean that Dean hasn't told him himself. It's impolite.

Now seems like a good time to show his appreciation, though. Cas still doesn't have the words, but he has sounds of appreciation and thanks, and he has hands (well, hand) with which to tightly hold onto the just-long-enough hair on the top of Dean's hair, fingers with which to trace the line of his jaw, the shell of his ear.

The last action makes him shiver, so Cas does it again, and again, until Dean is moaning around him as he slides back down. His forearm lays over Cas's hips when they stutter forward, a moan breaking free from Cas's lips this time. When Dean presses closer in response, he does it again, his own voice ringing in his ears in the otherwise silent motel room. He suddenly becomes aware of their surroundings again and wonders if the channel surfing tenant of the room behind them is asleep or if they can hear him now. It isn't a mortifying thought, or even a titillating one. It just makes him painfully aware of how much _more_ this moment is than it appears—and how wholly unequipped to handle it Cas feels. He doesn't know how to make things better for Dean, doesn't know how to make things better for _himself_ , for Sam who is hurting or the thousands of angels whose existential misery and confusion he caused.

(There is a difference between being repentant and feeling sorry, Cas knows now that he's experienced both.)

He failed at it all like he's failing now to do anything more than lie there and take what he wants without concern for anyone else. He can convince himself all he wants that this is what Dean wants and, because it's not a lie, he doesn't have to think about it any more than that.

Cas leans up on both elbows and meets Dean's eyes. The blankets have slipped back up his back, or rather Dean has slid down beneath them, and Cas thinks that this is more comfort than he's given Dean in weeks—which, while not being something he has to do, being in an objectively worse situation himself, is something he wants to do: is perhaps the only thing he's ever been sure he truly wanted to do. His quiet sadness falls from his shoulders like a wet coat, dragged down into the tide as he steps out of the water, and he says, "Dean."

Dean pulls off and replaces his mouth with his hand so he can nuzzle into the sweaty crease of Cas's thigh. "Mmhm."

"Come up here."

"This ain't about me, Cas, I told you—"

"I know, but this is what I want."

It's not strictly a lie. He does want Dean to come back and kiss him, wants to taste the sweat on Dean's brow and himself in Dean's mouth. He wants to feel the full heat of Dean against him again like a reminder of their shared humanity. He wants to look Dean in the eyes with his newly adjusted night vision and see if he can tell where green shifts suddenly into streaks of brown in his eyes, or grey and darker grey. It's just that, once he gets there, Cas has something else planned.

He may no longer be an angel, but his body has retained that muscle and reflex, unable to age but capable of adapting in service of Heaven. He puts that strength to very different use now as he turns them both back on their sides again, wrist too weak to hold himself over Dean the way he wants too, body too sore to keep him up anyway. It is enough to keep Dean wrapped in his arms, face to face, and not have to go anywhere else. The irony of what he's using those muscles for now does not escape him, but he doesn't much care anymore, abandoned by Heaven—and yes, he was abandoned by this man too, but he came back, for no matter how short a period, and Castiel would honor that as he did little else at this point.

For his part, Dean goes along with this maneuver, though whether it's because he really wants to or because it's what Cas wants is in question. To discern which is the truth, Cas kisses up from under Dean's jaw to his ear, scraping gently there with his teeth until Dean is bucking against him, hands clutching at Cas's shoulders in an attempt to get closer than skin to skin.

Because he's panting directly into Cas's ear when Cas finally gets his hand into Dean's briefs, Cas catches the hitch in his breath before he pulls Cas closer, too close for Cas's hand to stay comfortably where it is for long but not enough for him to retreat. Dean is heavy and solid in his hand and Cas thinks briefly that if they pulled apart for a moment, Dean could go to his duffel and Cas could soon have that in him—or, better, have Dean underneath him and have that weight in his hand still, just slick enough to tug in time with his own thrusts. They could do that right now, but Cas is tired, and when he feels the brief spots of cool dampness against his neck he knows Dean is already vulnerable enough as it is. He's almost certain that there won't be another time like this, but a part of him is okay with that, content with what it has, and with enough time it might convince the rest of him that it is a fine decision to stop thinking about what-ifs for now. Savor the moment. Carpe diem.

Arm around Dean's back, Cas gathers him in until they're cheek to cheek, his hand still moving slowly between them.

"What I want is you," he continues lowly, wedging his thigh between Dean's to pry him open and sliding a hand down his thigh when it hitched higher. "What I want is always you."

Dean's eyes flutter shut without opening in the first place. "Cas."

"I know." Dean keens when Cas's hand retreats, but when fingers brush his lips he opens them immediately. While Dean still has the excuse of being incapable of replying, he adds piece by piece, "I missed you. I would do anything for you. You know that. I know you do."

True to form, Dean responds only by tenderly laving his tongue across the pads of Cas's fingers, his hand coming up to hold Cas's still. His thumb fits perfectly in the dip of Cas's palm, calluses to newgrown calluses like they were shaped to hold each other. Cas is trying to hold it together, to be good for Dean, but Dean's hips keep bumping into his with aborted thrusts and his lips drag against Cas's knuckles in a thoroughly distracting way. He reaches his limit when Dean opens his eyes and pulls Cas's palm away enough to reveal the thread of spit connecting them before Dean sucks him in again, deep enough that Cas's fingers start to curl over the back of his tongue.

When Cas pulls his fingers from Dean's mouth, he doesn't head for his destination immediately, lingering to curl his fingers under Dean's jaw, dry thumb on his chin, just _looking_ for the first time in what feels like years. Every time he isn't actively facing Dean he forgets how beautiful he is. It should be impossible for one person to be this beautiful, smile and eyes and demeanor and essence so bright that Cas could swear he can still see the soul radiating through his body. He would stare at Dean for hours and never get used to it, would happily survive on the socially acceptable snatches he gets.

In moments like this, it's unavoidable how much and in what ways he loves Dean. He thought he was used to it, but humanity has loosen the seal enough that the words crowd at Cas's lips instead of deep in his chest where they originate. Sometimes Cas morbidly fantasizes about telling Dean everything, laying his cards on the table like one lets a wound bleed clean of dirt and debris. He pictures setting his hands on Dean's shoulders so he can't turn away as Cas tells him, _I am in so much deeper than you that it's like standing in the bottom of a ravine, all the love you deign to give me pooling stagnant over my head as I attempt to reverse gravity enough to run a stream uphill and reach your feet._

Instead he says, nose to nose, "I hate you," which is not a lie and yet nowhere near true.

"Okay." Dean wraps his arm around Cas's neck. "Okay."

In the light of morning, Cas will remember how Dean's eyelids are a shade pinker than the rest of his face, more like his mouth. For now, he watches them open to stare at Cas like he knows it was not what Cas feels and believes it all the same.

Cas reaches down with his slick hand—he distantly recalls the Castiel of four years ago saying something about "manual stimulation" and Dean responding, "Dude, no two words have ever been less sexy."—but Dean seems to have no qualms now. He's pulling himself closer, then peeling himself away to throw his underwear across the room so that they're finally, finally touching completely.

"Cas, you," he gasps.

Dean's back twists and slips under Cas's bandaged hand. "Yes."

With that last level of contact, Dean comes back to himself, kissing Cas hard as he hikes his leg over Cas's hip. There's not enough room for both their hands between them, but there doesn't need to be as Cas takes them both in hand as much as possible and starts to move. Dean groans into his ear as they first slide together and takes Cas's face in both hands, biting at his lips and panting into his mouth in a simulacrum of a kiss that is somehow better than the real thing in that moment.

It is more than physically stimulating enough on its own, but it's the fact that this is Dean doing it that finally sends Cas over the edge. Dean, his beloved, his partner in crime, his magnetic north and his beginning, end, and all that glorious middle. Dean, who Cas honestly thought he might never see again after what he did. Dean who unknowingly taught him the very love and shame and want he's feeling right now.

"Come on, sweetheart, that's it," Dean says, and Cas can almost feel the preverbal rush of want and need that should accompany it—that hopes still does, even if he can't sense it—tugging at him like an undertow.

He feels for Dean and for himself, something enormous and too big for his body the way his angelic form was, endless when unbound to the physical plane and still never compact enough when materialized on Earth. A small, traitorous part of him posits maybe it's only Dean that awakens this depth and range of feeling in him, angel or not, but it is drowned out at the moment by the actual feeling itself, which pulses through him like electricity.

For a moment, all Cas knows is the afterimage of Dean's mouth under his jaw, five points of pressure in his hair and tightening thigh muscles scrambled into one incongruous feeling that is physically incorrect but somehow summarizes all the rest. He almost misses Dean's own release, awash in what he knows practically are simple endorphins but which feel like the world tilting beneath his feet. He manages to claw his way back to rational thought long enough to cradle the back of Dean's neck where his face is buried in Cas's shoulder, muffling his short, airless moans. Hands trail down Dean's arms to span as much of Dean's back as Cas can with only ten fingers, holding him close and following his rhythm until one last rock brings him over the edge.

It's only when they both fall silent in favor of panting breaths that Cas realizes he has been talking the whole time, incomprehensible but ardent words of affection he never meant to voice: pleas, promises, entreaties; terms of endearment and proclamations of beauty. Though he isn't sure exactly what he said, he knows instinctively that the biggest, clearest confession did not accidentally slip past his lips, for the day Castiel says "I love you" to Dean Winchester will be unmistakable for what it is.

Still, now, in the clearing, he wants to say it the way he has imagined every time he's thought about touching Dean again like this. But Cas understands now how wanting to say something and actually saying it are entirely different things. The words are physically stuck in his throat, which closes soundly on the tail of, "I," and seals shut like a crypt. Dean doesn't seem to notice the single vowel, though he must feel the shift of Cas's throat under his hand as he strokes there a few times, lax and sweet. _Love you, love you, love you_ piles up in his throat and he wraps his arms around Dean as unobtrusively as possible.

Dean lets himself be gathered, though Cas thinks this has more to do with his current state of bonelessness than anything else. Once he has enough breath back to do so, he exhales in a way Cas has realized is less a physical necessity and more some kind of emotional ritual, like getting rid of all the air in his lungs left from a given moment will fully purge the experience.

"Okay," Dean says as he rolls over onto his back, head still on Cas's pillow. "So... that happened."

"Eloquently put."

Dean snorts once, smile fading as quickly as it arrives. When he turns to look at Cas, maybe two inches between their noses, his face is as solemn as Dean gets outside of life or death moments.

Cas waits for him to speak, but when it becomes apparent no words are forthcoming, he hopes it's the right thing when he asks quietly, "Is that okay?"

"Little late for that, don't you think?" Dean replies, equally mild. After a moment, he adds. "I really am sorry, y'know."

Cas closes his eyes. "Yes. I know."

"Good."

When Dean kisses him now, it is unlike any of their kisses before. It feels like goodbye. It seems like their entire relationship has been spent parting ways, and they have never had a moment like this that didn't have an expiration date looming over it, but they've rarely had time in advance to know that they would be parting soon and properly say goodbye.

It's terrible; Cas knew intellectually that he avoided saying goodbye to Dean for a reason, but actually experiencing it cements the fact. It's an awful feeling that lodges in the pit of his stomach and refuses to let go, so he clings to Dean and lets himself be clung to in return, twenty points of pressure between them holding them together. Before, Cas could wrap his (still unphysical but appropriately scaled down to his vessel) wings around Dean when they hugged, when they so much as touched, and he knew Dean couldn't physically feel it but felt his soul react regardless, glowing brighter and warmer with proximity and then flaring when Cas's wings settled around him. All he has now is his hands. All he can do is hope they are enough.

When their lips part again with a soft and silent disconnect, sweat is cooling unevenly under them, trapped in patches between their bodies. Dean kisses Cas right under his eye before rolling out of bed towards the bathroom. He's back before Cas can finish opening his eyes and carrying a pair of washcloths, one wet and warm despite Cas not noticing the sink running. They're stiff and white the way all motel linens are, but the sensation of Dean hanging over him makes the unpleasantness easier to bear.

When Dean is done cleaning them both up, he points his thumb back at the bathroom and says, "I'll just..." but doesn't move.

He's watching Cas the way one watches a wild animal, one knee on the bed balanced perfectly to move forward or backward at the smallest sign. Cas sits up slowly, hand laying on Dean's, on the washcloth, on the bed where it's absolutely getting the sheets wet in a way that will be wholly uncomfortable in a moment.

Swallowing the indignation at the idea that Dean's afraid of Cas leaving when he's the one who kicked Cas out, he says, "I'll find our clothes. Even with blankets, I've found I get colder more easily now."

Dean's mouth twitches towards a smile before shutting down and nodding. "Okay. Good."

"Good," Cas repeats, and then Dean kisses his temple and escapes.

When they're back in bed, clothed and face to face again (what Cas thinks of as the last surprising development of the night), Castiel thinks back to Dean's question at the start of this. Is he happy? Does he know what that is? He thinks to his best memories: the first time he made Dean really laugh, when he was out of his mind following the trails of honeybees, that weekend during the Apocalypse when the brothers managed to find enough of a gap to find an amusement park and see if any of the rides could make Castiel sick (they didn't, but it was amusing to watch them try). Cas thinks he has been content, amused, even satisfied with his purpose and actions, but happiness has eluded him. Even now, with everything he's wanted in his arms, with a beautiful and satisfying night behind him, reunion with the person he cares most for in the world, he is too burdened by his mistakes and hurts to feel truly happy.

"Have you had pancakes yet?" Dean mumbles into Cas's shoulder. "M'totally buying you pancakes t'morrow."

Maybe he hasn't been happy. Maybe he never will be. Cas swallows the loss and wraps his arms back around Dean, staring at the ceiling until he's certain Dean is asleep and it's safe to succumb himself. He'll take what he can get.

And, in the morning, when Dean rehashes half of that night's conversation with almost flippant casualness, Cas lets him. He lets Dean pick fuzz off his vest for him and buy him pancakes with leftovers that go right into the mini fridge, lets Dean buy him a new splint and wrap it carefully around his hand, lets Dean let him take the first shower and lets him hide a wad of cash in Cas's pocket, lets him drag Cas in for one kiss he knows instinctively is their last before they've left the bed, both his hands on Cas's face as Cas clung across Dean's lower back, wrung out and overwrought. Cas understands penance. He only wishes his own were ever even as momentarily sweet.

But that's not the point of penance, is it? It is supposed to be sacrifice; it is supposed to hurt. As Cas ducks his head back down to look at Dean through the car window one last time, he thinks this would still count. Watching Dean drive away, he knows he's right.

**Author's Note:**

> I did it! I finally did it! I wrote about the fanfic gap. please clap. 
> 
> deeply, deeply fitting that the first destiel fic I post, emerging from the rat race of a decade's worth of attempts, is about the last episode I watched regularly back in the olden days. shout out to my fellow superwholock high schoolers who found out kevin was gonna die right before the ep aired and immediately stopped watching lmao
> 
> title from "[paul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fbA_agbrOg)" by big thief. I went through so many choices and accidentally accrued a series of increasingly insane songs to listen to while writing this, so you can also imagine that the title is basically any lyric from any of [these songs](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6KRrcO3g2Sae17dEjXlLn8)—although lemme tell you, it's hard to write smut while listening to a song from spring awakening and alternating between laughing hysterically and Realizing™ things about the lyrics. truly a bizarre experience.
> 
> pls let me know what you think! I always wanted to write spn fic when I was watching 9 years ago so this is a big moment for me, I'd love to hear thoughts lol. also for funsies while editing I marked out every conscious reference/allusion in the google doc and it is truly just... an insane collection, totally unnecessary and yet deeply, _deeply_ in character for me. if you'd like to hear it lemme know in the comments or on twitter or smth lmao
> 
> (and to the regularly recurring folks: hey, long time no see! I haven't had the motivation to write since the whole, like, getting cancer thing—dw I'm alright now—so it's nice to be back: and, more importantly, get to do the classic "hey sorry this is late, I had [some major life event downplayed]" a/n lmao)
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter @[Iamphouse](http://twitter.com/Iamphouse)


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